Meh, there's been some seasons where the palm of my hand, along the line of the knuckles, has just blown up stupidly with bruising. I end up having to do a heap of tennis ball catching during the week, otherwise they'll be too swollen by the Saturday; and it really disrupts the gripping of the ball when I am to bowl.

With professional cricketers, playing 10 months of the year, you get that happening and, without the gloves, it'd curtail your ability to practice enormously.

Hmmm, I'll check with Phyzzy to see how many cases of swollen hand he has to treat.

Could be your coach is over-working the focused practice at full pace.
A lot of slip catching is reaction work - getting hands into the right place, so you can work on this by taking some pace off and bringing the catchers in closer - that would stop your swollen hand syndrome maybe? Like fielding at slip to a spinner - type practice.

Id use the gloves but I never have. I've worked with one idiotic coach in men's rep cricket where 10s of reps of high velocity balls was seen as showing commitment and "manning up." In this particular case I left the fielding practice to do my improvised "physio mandated stretches." What struck me though was the commitment of the newer players to bruise and batter themselves to impress when in reality they were damaging themselves.

There is diminishing returns to slip work if your hands are getting battered and, as Jack said, it can impact your ability to bowl.

Of course there are ways around needing them but if high volume, high velocity catching practice is the order of the day then I am all for them.

Last edited by Goughy; 08-01-2013 at 07:13 AM.

If I only just posted the above post, please wait 5 mins before replying as there is bound to be edits

Meh, there's been some seasons where the palm of my hand, along the line of the knuckles, has just blown up stupidly with bruising. I end up having to do a heap of tennis ball catching during the week, otherwise they'll be too swollen by the Saturday; and it really disrupts the gripping of the ball when I am to bowl.

With professional cricketers, playing 10 months of the year, you get that happening and, without the gloves, it'd curtail your ability to practice enormously.

Flogging too hard imo.

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